


In Which Watching Each Other Sleep is... Not Weird

by Cumberbatch Critter (ivelostmyspectacles)



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Ichabod being a little improper :P, Possibly Unrequited Love, Sleeping Abbie, Sleeping Ichabod, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 16:37:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2588642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/Cumberbatch%20Critter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abbie watches Ichabod sleep.<br/>It's relaxing.</p><p>Ichabod watches Abbie sleep.<br/>It's... not so relaxing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Watching Each Other Sleep is... Not Weird

**Author's Note:**

> I like sleepy stuff, so I shoved it into this fandom and /fistbump finger explosion  
> And a little UST because, poor Ichabod.
> 
> These scenarios take place at different times, by the way. It's not all this sleep watching on the same day. xD
> 
> I do not own _Sleepy Hollow_. Thanks for reading!

_Ichabod  
_

  
Abbie liked watching Ichabod sleep. She swore it wasn't anything weird, it was just... it was just relaxing. Something about Ichabod sleeping was just so damn relaxing, Abbie wanted to stare at him all the times she caught him sleeping. Which wasn't often, mind you; he had to be exhausted to fall asleep in front of her, but when he did...

Okay, she felt a little creepy staring at him while he slept, but it was mind-numbingly, like, meditative. Or something like that.

They shared a hotel room more than once now, including most presently, when a case had led them out of Sleepy Hollow and it had gotten too late to drive back. Always one room, because Abbie couldn't afford to buy them separate ones (Ichabod had taken to it poorly at first _"Sleeping in the same room as a lady, I possibly couldn't -"_ , but had gotten used to it), but always a double. That was how she got to see him sleep, in an actual bed, and not just passed out in the chairs at the archives.

He was one of those tidy sleepers, which generally pissed Abbie off because how could _anyone_ sleep all in a straight line, arms and legs symmetrical, but with Ichabod, it was just... _right_. Because _of course_ he was a tidy sleeper. It didn't surprise her, and it made it endearing. He slept on his side, the left one, generally, with his legs drawn up slightly towards his stomach. Not curled into a ball, just slightly constricted, like he was trying to hold himself in a way that reminded him he was still there, just living a different time.

One arm was tucked under his head, the other draped loosely over his chest to fall adjacent to the one under his head. He usually let his hair down when he slept; even when he did, it still ended up falling into his face, draped into his eyes. Abbie had watched him rouse from his sleep on one occasion because his hair had fallen across his nose; Ichabod had mumbled something incoherent and tiredly pushed it aside, only to fall asleep with his arm still draped across his face. She had tried not to laugh too loudly, then, while simultaneously trying not to _aww_ out loud; he wasn't a puppy, he was a grown man, for goodness sake.

He slept through the night, too. He didn't toss, didn't turn. If he did at all, he ended up on his back, his arms limp above his head and his face turned to bury into the pillow. He didn't snore, either, which Abbie was _highly_ grateful for on the nights they shared or when he fell asleep on casework. He just had quiet, even inhales and exhales, regularly timed and nearly silent. His breathing was soothing, in a weird kind of way.

He didn't usually have the blankets close to his face, or maybe they just ended up pulled away somehow. Abbie would bet on the first option, because the sheets always seemed to settle somewhere around his navel (not that slept without a shirt on, not around her, anyway) no matter if he was on his side or on his back. Maybe they felt stifling to him in a world that was already different enough. Abbie didn't know, but she was going to get him a sherpa blanket for Christmas and see if he cuddled up to that or not because who wouldn't?

Abbie would try to get some sleep and fail, and she'd inevitably start noticing the way his eyes moved under his lids as he slept. Depending on the light, his eyelids looked nearly translucent. ‘Asleep’ was easily the time where Abbie would say that Ichabod looked the most fragile, and that was because he let all of himself go when he slept.

He wasn't a gentleman from the seventeenth century, all politically correct and societally proper. He was just another guy, taken away into that dreamland that came with sleep. He wasn't a Witness who had the purpose of saving the world on his shoulders when he slept; he was simply relaxed, and vulnerable looking in a way that almost scared Abbie. If she didn't know him, she'd think he was just a poor sucker ready for the picking. (In some ways, he was, twenty-first century wise, but against demons? He kicked ass.)

Ichabod shifted in his sleep, yawned slightly, and promptly proceeded to fall back asleep.

Abbie wanted to be jealous, but she smiled instead. Taking a page from his book, she closed her own eyes and tried to fall asleep again, and this time, the sound of Ichabod breathing not ten feet away was the thing to lull her into the security of the sleep she so desperately needed.

* * *

  _Abbie_  
  
   
Ichabod knew that he was in the wrong for it, but he couldn't help himself. He could! - he didn't wish to sound like some sort of miscreant! - but it was just... unavoidable, really.

Sleeping a couch was difficult. Yes, he had spent many a night sleeping on surfaces that were neither comfortable nor bed-worthy, but the sofa in the one room hotel was simply too small for his body. So, he had resigned himself to a night without sleep. He simply couldn't have made the Lieutenant sleep on the couch, no matter how much she tried to demand it of him.

Now, Ichabod was, very abashedly, succumbing to watching Miss Mills sleep.

He knew he shouldn't. It was improper. But... she _was_ asleep. She wouldn't know. Not that that made it better - it made it worse, even - but... Hang it all.

It was really a good thing that Ichabod had insisted that Abigail take the bed. She was sprawled out across the small, twin bed, arms and legs thrown haphazard from between the sheets. It was most currently summer and the air conditioning in the hotel was meager at best; Ichabod wasn't bothered by it, but Abbie's mumbled complaints had to have been for something.

Which explained why she had gone to get a shower in the small en-suite (and not to get started on that, but Ichabod was _used_ to indoor plumbing now and enjoyed it; but with this bathroom, he could barely turn around without danger of tripping over the toilet and falling into the shower) and come out with only her... sports bra and very... _very_... short... shorts.

The blankets, save the top sheet, were in a pile at her feet, which meant there was an extreme amount of exposed skin. Ichabod wasn't leering. He wasn't. But her skin, unblemished, smooth, and creamy like... ah! milk chocolate! It drew his attention. Any exposed skin would have, frankly; he might have thought that two hundred and thirty one years had gone by in a blink, but it really had been that long. Not only had it been that long since he had had the pleasure of lying with Katrina, but it had also been that women hadn't worn trousers, let alone shorts, in his age. Skin was... eye-catching. Abbie was eye-catching.

Ichabod huffed through his nose and flicked his gaze skyward. God help him.

He was just coping, that was all. He would never act on anything - not that there _was_ anything- because, one day, he would have Katrina again. Until then, he was simply a man who couldn't help but be invariably drawn to exposed skin now and again. It was perfectly normal, so he told himself.

He longed for the day to hold Katrina in his arms again.

Until then, he noticed the way that Abbie's raven hair swept out across the off-white pillow, falling loosely onto the mattress or clinging to her neck and face. Or the way that her dark eyelashes brushed against her skin gently, how her lips were parted slightly as she breathed in and out in her unconsciousness. Sometimes, her breath ruffled her hair; a few strands would fall away or fall into her face.

Ichabod jumped like a startled rabbit when Abbie moved, grabbing at her pillow and drawing it closer to jamb her face into it. She sighed and apparently fell back asleep. Ichabod sighed heavily, slumping slightly into the sofa.

This was most improper.

Ichabod cast his gaze around the small hotel room. There was a small television, two windows with bedraggled curtains drawn across them, one lounge chair, and a small sofa, currently on which he was residing. There was nothing else to hold his attention.

Abbie rolled over in her sleep.

Ichabod winced again. He hadn't even been looking at her. He was incredibly fidgety; his nerves were high strung. He chanced a glance at Abbie again, hoping that she wasn't awake yet; only to come to a short stop when he realised that, in turning over, the thin sheet that Abbie had been twisted into had slipped away from her body, and Ichabod was now subjected to a rather revealing view of... Miss Mill's backside.

Ichabod inhaled shortly and turned his attention to the wall. Those... short shorts left nothing to the imagination. Women of this age! Part of himself was merely abashed, but there was a part that celebrated. He tried not to listen to it.

Abbie made a noise and the mattress squeaked again. Ichabod refused to look back to see whatever way she had turned over this time.

"Crane...?"

The third time he jumped in the expanse of twenty minutes. He looked over at her warily, although he found that the wild way Abbie's hair framed her face as she had sat up was highly amusing never-mind the circumstances, and he ended up smiling. "Lieutenant," he said quietly.

"Why aren't you asleep...?" Abbie untangled her feet from the blankets and stumbled to her feet. How could anybody look so... Ichabod wasn't sure he had a word.

He cleared his throat. "I couldn't sleep," he said truthfully. He wished that she'd put some proper clothes on, or, at the very least, get back into bed.

"Ah." Abbie yawned and ran her fingers through her hair. "Awesome." With that, she turned and stumbled into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

"‘Awesome’, indeed," Ichabod muttered, mostly under his breath, and sank down on the couch to throw his arm over his eyes.

It was going to be a long night.


End file.
